NOTED ENGLISH ACTRESS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 32, 1 November 1928, Page 3

NOTED ENGLISH ACTRESS

OFFERS FROM AMERICA

Mr. Anthony Vai Prinsep, whose company at the Grand Opera House is headed by his wife, Miss Margaret Bannerman, has been prominently associated with the London stage for many years. On returning to Australia, Mr. Prinsep said it was the present intention to produce in Melbourne “Other Men’s Wives,” and later a dramatisation of Joseph Conrad’s powerful novel “Victory.” Mr. Prinsep’s first wife was Miss Marie Lohr, daughter of Mr. L. J. Lohr and Miss Kate Bishop, both of whom were xyell known in New Zealand some 40 years ago. Miss Lohr was lessee of the Globe Theatre, London, for some years. Miss Bannerman is Canadian by birth—English by adoption. That is to say, Canada has never seen Miss Bannerman the actress, for the simple reason that this brilliant artist was caught young by London, and held firm for several years—and, after all, yyhat counts when London calls? It Is delightful to hear this gifted actress tell of the brilliant compliment paid her and her “Tony” when their lease of the Globe Theatre ran oitt. An “all-star”, cast assembled in the historic old ' theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue, and it included such names as Leo. Quartermain, Allan Ainsworth, Leslie Henson, Laddie Cliff, Herbert Marshall Gerald du Maurier, Phyllis Monckton, Joseph Coyne, and twenty others. The receipts, which amounted to £llOO (the Globe only seats 1200), were handed over to the Green Room Rag Fund, a charitable adjunct to the Green Rooni Club, which provides pensions for old and needy actors, without “telling the world” about it. On that occasion Sir William Orpen designed the programme cover, “Adam and Eve in Piccadilly,” and Mr. Arnold Bennett wrote a clever foreword on the programme extolling the educative virtues, of the Green Room Club. Miss Bannerman has not yet appeared in America. “It is one of my ambitions to play “New York,” she confided to a “Dominion” interviewer yesterday, “I have been offered several tempting engagements, but it must be the right play at the right time. They wanted me to play “Our Betters” in New York, but it had been done there just after the war, and on that occasion was hardly a success, so ydit see the stars were not propitious. Still, Broadway has a way of calling, so I suppose I shall get there in time. After Australia—South Africa perhaps, then back to dear old London.”

Mr. Prinsep is a son of Mr. Valentine Cameron Prinsep, R.A., a celebrated English painter, who on a notable occasion went to India to paint the scone of the declaration of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1888.